CPDB: cysteine protease annotation database in Leishmania species

Area of Science:

• Parasitology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) outbreaks drive renewed interest in cysteine proteases.
• The Cysteine Protease Database (CPDB) centralizes data for Leishmania and Trypanosoma brucei.
• Increased Leishmania genome submissions to NCBI highlight the need for curated data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a comprehensive platform for cysteine protease (CP) data.
• To facilitate drug discovery for Visceral Leishmaniasis by providing inhibitor information.
• To offer researchers easy access to CP physiochemical properties, cleavage sites, and functional classifications.

Main Methods:

• Data compilation from literature and NCBI.
• Analysis of physiochemical and molecular properties using ExPASy tools.
• Classification of functional families using SVMProt.
• 3-D structure visualization via JMol on a JAVA platform.

Main Results:

• CPDB provides integrated data on CPs from Leishmania and Trypanosoma brucei.
• Includes downloadable protein inhibitors with 3-D structures.
• Offers links for functional analysis of related proteins.

Conclusions:

• CPDB serves as a valuable resource for researchers in drug discovery.
• The database simplifies the analysis of protein properties and inhibitor interactions.
• Centralized data access accelerates research in parasitic diseases.